By Lachlan Abbott
A council has voted to permanently remove a repeatedly vandalised Captain Cook memorial from an inner-northern Melbourne park after catastrophic damage meant it would cost thousands of dollars to repair.
The City of Yarra decided on Tuesday night to get rid of the granite monument, which usually sits at an entrance to Edinburgh Gardens in North Fitzroy. Its bronze plaques may now be given to the Captain Cook Society, which celebrates the British explorer.
The monument after being cleaned following vandalism in 2020.Credit: Nine News
A council report said frequent vandal attacks in recent years, particularly around Australia Day, had caused irreparable harm to the bust of James Cook’s face and meant the council was pouring more and more money into the memorial’s maintenance.
The Age reported last year that council officers recommended the monument be removed from the municipality’s collection due to its poor condition and their view that it had little significance to Edinburgh Gardens.
The monument is currently in council storage after it was toppled and tagged with the words “cook the colony” on January 28 last year. Yarra City Council chief executive Sue Wilkinson said on Tuesday night that the damage from that attack was “catastrophic” and would cost $15,000 to fix.
Councillors voted unanimously at Tuesday’s meeting to support the officer recommendation and remove the memorial from the City of Yarra’s collection.
The Captain Cook statue at Edinburgh Gardens was defaced in June 2020 amid the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.Credit: Penny Stephens
Mayor Stephen Jolly said the council had to separate the debate about whether some statues linked to colonialism were appropriate with the “boring economic issue” of the cost of maintaining this monument, which he described as relatively unknown among locals.
“I’m not in favour of demolishing statues of people in the past, even problematic ones,” he said.
“But [I] don’t think if we put it back up, it would be just damaged one more time. It would be ongoing, ongoing and ongoing. And how can we justify that?”
Premier Jacinta Allan said at a press conference on Wednesday morning that she was not aware of the reason for the City of Yarra’s decision.
“Any sort of senseless vandalism of monuments and public spaces is deeply disrespectful, and I think we’ve seen enough of the division,” she said.
“We’ve seen enough of, particularly [from] some politicians, trying to divide at a time when we know … they are looking for leaders to lead and not further divide. So it’s disappointing if Yarra has made this decision on those reasons.”
However, Mayor Jolly strongly rejected any notion that the decision was based on councillor views of whether colonial statues were appropriate.
“[Jacinta Allan] has systematically bled councils dry of money, but then wants to dictate what councils should spend money on,” Jolly said on Wednesday morning.
Premier Jacinta Allan at a construction site in the Docklands on Wednesday morning.Credit: Joe Armao
“We haven’t got the money to be the protector of every statue. And we’ve got an alternative here that’s a win-win for everybody.”
At Tuesday night’s meeting, Jolly encouraged the Yarra chief executive to consider an offer from the Captain Cook Society’s Bill Lang for that group to take possession of the monument’s plaques and seek another location for their display.
Lang said the Captain Cook Society were having informal discussions with other local governments and museums to find a home for the monument, and would “act as custodians of it in the short term”.
Captain Cook.Credit: Matt Golding
“Rather than it sitting in some council shed somewhere ... it should be preserved, and an appropriate place found for it,” Lang said.
He believed helping facilitate the monument’s removal from Edinburgh Gardens was a pragmatic step and did not amount to giving in to pressure from the vandals.
“I don’t think it’s for a council to necessarily pursue things like the memorial, if they can’t afford to do it, given other pressing issues citizens have got in the City of Yarra,” Lang said.
Bill Lang from the Captain Cook Society at Cooks’ Cottage in Fitzroy Gardens.Credit: Paul Jeffers
But Opposition Leader Brad Battin said removing statutes that had been targeted was giving in to the vandals.
“I think we need to stand strong and remember the fact that this is part of our history,” he told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.
Lang also said frequent vandalism of Captain Cook monuments was “incredibly disappointing”.
“We would all do much better to understand our history and to learn from it,” he said.
With Daniella White and Rachel Eddie
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